1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile terminal and a modified keypad operation method thereof for displaying a display window in a vacant space created during the modification (split or slide) of a keypad to easily perform a text input to an edit object through the display window.
2. Description of the Related Art
A mobile terminal can perform various functions such as a data and voice communication function, a photo or video capture function through a camera, a voice storage function, a music file reproduction function through a speaker system, an image or video display function, a game function, and thus is implemented as a multimedia player. Moreover, mobile terminals can receive broadcast or multicast signals to allow the user to view video or television programs.
Mobile terminals have also evolved to display 3-dimensional (3D) stereoscopic images allowing depth perception and stereovision exceeding the level of displaying two-dimensional images. Accordingly, a trend of producing contents in 3D images even in a mobile terminal has been emerged as well as movies and TV contents.
The mobile terminal may include a touch screen to perform a complex function to which the foregoing various functions are added, and a basic keypad (or keyboard) may be displayed on the touch screen while inputting text. The basic keypad may include a plurality of keys indicating languages (Korean, English, etc.), a plurality of keys indicating special characters (symbols, numerals, emoticons), a Shift key, an Enter key, and other keys. Accordingly, the user can enter text (memo, text message) using the basic keypad.
However, according to the related art, the user has to touch a lot of keys to correspond to each character when entering a long text message. Furthermore, a distance between keys is generally small and the user often has many typing errors because of the thickness of their thumb or other finger when touching keys on the keypad. Thus, when a typing error occurs in the middle portion of the text, the user as to remove all the characters subsequent to the typing error and enter them again.
In addition, for a hearing impaired person, a video phone call using a sign language can be used, but transferring the meaning using a sign language and understanding the meaning of the sign language is difficult because the methods of expressing sign languages are different. In some instance, the basic keypad can include multiple keypads, but operating the multiple keypads is cumbersome and time consuming. The space utilization of the basic keypad is also limited an inconvenient.